Sri Lanka’s Schmittian peace: sovereignty, enmity and illiberal order

The dominant discourses and practices of post-Cold War liberal peace-building are increasingly challenged by illiberal and authoritarian alternatives. This article adds to the emerging literature on ‘authoritarian conflict management’ and ‘illiberal peace’ using the work of the controversial German jurist Carl Schmitt, the foremost theoretician of anti-liberal thought in the twentieth-century. I use the case of Sri Lanka to illustrate how...